McDaniel is gone from NBC. But the corrupted corporate media culture remains.

The forces that made the coup-plotting former RNC chair a paid contributor are still shaping news and information about this pivotal election.

We couldn’t have asked for a better situation to shine a bright light on the corruption of the corporate media—and its impulse to legitimize MAGA extremism and lawbreakers for profit—than NBC’s hiring former RNC chair, election denier, and Trump enabler Ronna McDaniel.

The extraordinary public rebellion—anchors and stars, from Chuck Todd and Joe Scarborough to Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell, vilifying their network, trashing their employer like we’ve never seen before—brought McDaniel crashing down, fired by NBC within days of the network hiring her.

Had it happened at another network, say CNN or ABC—and McDaniel was reportedly in talks with those networks and others before accepting the job with NBC—would we have seen the same rebellion by news anchors?

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It’s highly doubtful, as Chuck Todd—of all people!—now retired from “Meet the Press" as a host (and thus not needing access to politicians), with his enormous clout at NBC, was the one who gave everyone else at NBC and MSNBC an opening to follow him in an unprecedented public flogging of their bosses.

In his takedown of NBC, now in his role as NBC chief political analyst, he sat on the Meet the Press panel with Meet the Press host Kristen Welker and others after Welker’s interview with McDaniel. That interview had been booked before McDaniel was announced as a paid contributor, which was all the more galling as it put Welker in the position of either canceling it or going hard on a colleague.

She decided to (mostly) do the latter. Todd, in saying the network owed Welker an apology, used the “access” word, which is the first time I’ve heard any of these people admit to something we’ve all been saying for a long time:

And so, when NBC made the decision to give her NBC News’ credibility, you gotta ask yourself, what does she bring NBC News? And when we make deals like this, and I’ve been at this company a long time, you’re doing it for access, access to audience, sometimes it’s access to an individual.

This was an admission that “access journalism” is at the core of so much political coverage. And though McDaniel has been rightly tossed to the curb, access journalism is alive and well—as is the “both sides” coverage the media believe they must pursue to obtain the access, even though one side is supporting a rapist and insurrectionist who is charged with 91 felonies and promotes the Big Lie that the 2020 election was rigged and that he won, a lie that has fomented violence and an insurrection.

NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde said in an email to staff that, "After listening to the legitimate concerns of many of you," he decided to dump McDaniel, per Reuters:

I want to personally apologize to our team members who felt we let them down. While this was a collective recommendation by some members of our leadership team, I approved it and take full responsibility for it.

But Conde also wrote that he was “committed to the principle that we must have diverse viewpoints on our programs, and to that end, we will redouble our efforts to seek voices that represent different parts of the political spectrum.”

He still doesn’t get it. What does he mean by “diverse viewpoints" and “redouble our efforts” to get voices that “represent different parts of the political spectrum”?

MSNBC already has quite a few Republicans on its air (several of whom are anchoring shows), from Joe Scarborough and Charlie Sykes to Nicole Wallace and Michael Steele. They’ve served in Republican administrations (Wallace) or ran the RNC (Steele), were right-wing radio hosts (Scarborough and Sykes), or served as GOP members of Congress (Scarborough).

What Conde’s really talking about is seeking Trump-supporting pundits—MAGA. But that’s simply not compatible with the mission of journalism, which is to represent the truth. And it’s certainly not compatible with defending democracy. You can’t have election deniers and people who supported—much less engaged in—a coup against this country as paid contributors.

But this gets to the root of the problem: the “both sides” culture of political reporters in Washington and access, access, access. The New York Times reported:

In his memo on Tuesday, Mr. Conde described Ms. McDaniel’s hiring as “a collective recommendation” by members of his leadership team. Those deputies included Carrie Budoff Brown, who oversees NBC News political coverage; Rebecca Blumenstein, the NBC News president; and Rashida Jones, the MSNBC president. (Ms. Blumenstein is a former editor at The New York Times.)

Blumenstein was the deputy managing editor at the New York Times. Carrie Budoff Brown was editor of Politico. They are the two who reportedly brought in McDaniel, having become friendly with her over the past few years—surely friendships of convenience. (Jones, who heads MSNBC, reportedly just went along with it, which surely doesn’t speak well of her, but she wasn’t instrumental.)

Both Politico and the New York Times political coverage has been abysmal for years (and that’s not to be confused with other coverage of other issues, particularly at the Times, which often does good work in other areas), with Politico having made access journalism the standard and always bowing to a GOP that plays it like a fiddle. Politico and its success at getting scoops via access journalism—scoops that are morsels handed out to well-behaved reporters by the powers that be in Washington—influenced the Times, which was threatened by its competition.

The Times hired away from Politico quite a few of the most problematic political reporters who are now at the Times, like Maggie Haberman, bringing that brand of access journalism to the Times. But it’s now a revolving door where reporters go back and forth; former Times access reporter Jonathan Martin is back at Politico, where he’d been before, after being at the Times for a few years.

I’m not saying access journalism didn’t exist before, nor wasn’t happening at the networks. But Blumenstein and Budoff Brown brought this DC political media culture of access at all costs—in which you allow Republicans to make demands and shape coverage in return for access or face being cut off if you piss off those Republicans—to NBC News at a time when MAGA is the GOP.

Even if these two get fired at the end of this debacle, which seems unlikely, the culture is entrenched. Already, political reporters at NBC, for example, are apparently freaking out that the firing of McDaniel has now ruined the access they’ve cultivated for years.

Semafor—itself a product of the Beltway political media—reports, “NBC News’s dramatic hiring and firing of a former RNC chairwoman this week threatens to undo years of repositioning itself as friendly to Republican officials and viewers.”

Now, NBC staffers are bracing for Republican backlash, fielding texts from angry GOP sources.

“Political reporters here didn’t take part in the backlash, nor did they get to give input on the hire,” one NBC News journalist said. “But they’ll be the ones who have to pick up the pieces with sources who are now dismayed with the organization.”

Access journalism is like an addiction. Even though the right outcome occurred this week because of the great, loud voices at NBC who spoke up against the lifting up of undemocratic forces, the access journalists see it as drying up their ability to get a fix.

Semafor’s Max Tani continued:

The conflict over McDaniel threatens to reverse some of the gains that top network figures believed that it had made to establish some credibility with members of the Republican Party. NBC lobbied hard behind the scenes for a GOP primary debate, dispatching anchor Lester Holt to meet with the RNC as part of the network’s pitch.

It worked: NBC was the first non-Fox outlet to secure a debate. And throughout the GOP presidential primary, the television news organization and its digital counterpart broke a number of major stories about the contest, including the news of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign announcement with Elon Musk, and infighting within the major super PAC supporting DeSantis for president.

Is that really all that matters? Getting access to the RNC for a debate? Breaking the story of Ron DeSantis’s campaign announcement? Elon Musk? All at the expense of legitimizing a party and the top officials in it who are coup plotters? Come on, there are lots of other stories to break in this world in which you can walk away with your integrity and not harm democracy.

So yeah, it’s great that McDaniel is gone. But the corrupted culture in the corporate media is still there, and no one should think we will see the coverage, the approach, or the access journalism game itself change any time soon. So we have to continue to raise hell as we see it play out during this pivotal election.